Singer/songwriter Camaron Ochs, better known to the country music-loving world as simply Cam, is in the midst of the best year of her career. Not only did she earn multiple nominations at the Grammys (Best Country Solo Performance), ACM Awards (Song, Single and New Female Vocalist of the Year) and CMA Awards (Song and Music Video of the Year) in 2016, but she also served as an opening act on Dierks Bentley’s Somewhere on a Beach Tour and is currently headlining her own Burning House Tour. Cam had more good news to share on Monday (Nov. 21) when she revealed she will serve as the supporting act during George Strait’s eight Las Vegas tour dates in 2017.

Not bad for an artist who was a relative unknown to the majority of the radio-listening universe 18 months ago. But as Cam tells it, she’s had a lot of help from some strong women along the way.

“There’s definitely been women that have looked out for me and I feel like even the women that I don’t know personally, well, I still stand on their shoulders,” said Cam to NCD. “Women in country music as artists specifically are the most badass women. They are the women that don’t take sh*t from anybody. You look at like a Dolly [Parton] or Loretta [Lynn], can you imagine somebody trying to tell them what they should or shouldn’t be doing? They were so strong and so outspoken. Patsy Cline, too. I owe it to all of them why I get to do what I get to do and that’s why these next women that are going to be coming up after me, everyone should remember, sometimes you get lost in this thing as if it’s competition, they should be going farther than . . . I’m going to go as far as I can, and they should be able, because I went there, to go farther. It is always a big helping-each-other-up moment. The cool thing about music is it’s always going forward.

“Miranda [Lambert] and Carrie [Underwood] are the ones who are sort of—and I know it sounds weird to say because they are still in it—they are role models. But for me, they are ahead of me and these are the women who are role models—Kacey Musgraves, too. All those people making good art, that’s what makes you really excited about making your art the way you want to make it. I think all of them are doing an amazing job at being role models.”